Commerce minister Piyush Goyal has said that India was open to all suggestions on removing 'unfair' trade barriers, reiterating the Narendra Modi government's rush to repair business relations with the US ahead of the prime minister's visit to the US this weekend.
“We have an open mind, if there are any trade barriers in India, we are willing to re-look at that ,” Goyal said at Tuesday morning's Asia-Pacific Trade Facilitation Forum event in Delhi, organised by his ministry along with the UN, Asian Development Bank and CII.
Without mentioning the US, Goyal said how the trend of one nation putting trade barriers and the other country retaliating “will only worsen the architecture of free trade in...the world.”
In June, the US had removed India from its Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) trade programme that gave about 3,000 export items from India, worth $5.6 billion, duty-free access to the American markets. This is estimated to amount to 12 per cent of India's exports to the US. India had retorted by imposing tariff restrictions on 29 US items a week later.
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With Trump slated to appear at Modi's rally in Houston on Sunday, expectations are that an agreement will be thrashed out in time for the two leaders to announce when they meet. Modi is visiting the US to take part in the UN General Assembly's annual event. Hectic negotiations have been going on to work out a solution that will see India getting back on the GSP list, even as it addresses Trump administration's long-standing demand for getting "equitable and reasonable access to its markets".
“We are willing to try and simplify (trade barriers), or eliminate them if they are causing an unfair disadvantage on international trade,” Goyal announced. At the same time, the minister pointed out that India's trade policies were transparent and how it was often India that has been at the recieving end, with trade protectionism increasing all over the world in the last year. “ We in India very often have not been able to create non-tariff barriers (like other countries). Other countries have often stalled a great number of Indian exports, particularly on the services side.”
“It should be a collective effort, on India as well as other countries, to work towards removing these barriers,” he exhorted.
